I
n rural South Texas there’s a cemetery with names on the headstones like Davis, Baker and Harris. That in itself isn’t so odd. What is strange,reports The Guardian,is the types of names you won’t see. There are no Garcias here, no Lopezes or Hernandezes. That’s pretty unusual for a county where half the population is Hispanic.
The apparent reason for the lack of Latin names became clear earlier this year when Dorothy Barrera tried to arrange her husband’s burial in San Domingo cemetery. When she approached the cemetery’s caretaker, Jimmy Bradford, he told her the association had voted against allowing her husband’s remains to be placed there “because he’s a Mexican.”
A Hispanic rights group has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that officials in the small town of Normanna have had a “whites only” policy at the cemetery for decades. The alleged cemetery policy is, obviously, in violation of state and federal law.